Free City States 1.2

[Tiramisu]

Tiramisu submitted a new resource:

Free City States - Gameplay, Rise and Fall

Steamlink: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1405531706

Description

Every turn there is a chance that a rebelling free city is destroyed and replaced by a new city state. The newly created city state will get the nearby units of the rebelling free city and it will inherit the population of the old city.
Only cities that were no original capital cities and do not have any world wonder can be replaced by a city state.

Note that this mod increases the...

Read more about this resource...

 

[Aparioss Frank]

Maybe make the chance of rebelling cities goes up based on the number of turns they stay in rebel state. The longer they stay in rebel state, the higher the chance that next turn they will turn into city-states.
Also, the new city-states included in the mod all have abilities as well right?

 

[Tiramisu]

Maybe make the chance of rebelling cities goes up based on the number of turns they stay in rebel state. The longer they stay in rebel state, the higher the chance that next turn they will turn into city-states.

That is funny, because one of my subscribers suggested to lower the rebelling chance for free city with low loyalty, which is kind of the opposite of what you are suggesting. So there are people who would not like it, if the rebel chance increased over time, especially when a player is about to conquer a free city. So I hope you agree.

Also, the new city-states included in the mod all have abilities as well right?

Yes, of course! They are normal city states.

 

[Aparioss Frank]

That is funny, because one of my subscribers suggested to lower the rebelling chance for free city with low loyalty, which is kind of the opposite of what you are suggesting. So there are people who would not like it, if the rebel chance increased over time, especially when a player is about to conquer a free city. So I hope you agree.



Yes, of course! They are normal city states.

You can always add a check, so that a rebelling city with enemies units within its border, or the city center not at full HP cannot be converted. Or even make it so that within a fee turns after a city rebel or leaves combat, it cannot be converted to city state.

 

[Tiramisu]

I have already made the conversion probability dependent on the city damage, but still players might get annoyed, if a city state converts right before their army could even enter the territory of a free city. On the other hand your suggested game rule might be abused by players by simply putting one unit in the free city territory without attacking the city. So I am afraid it is not easy to balance.
If you simply want to increase the conversion probability you can open FreeCityStates.lua in my mod files with an editor and the increase the value of

local iConversionProbability = 7

 

[Aparioss Frank]

I have already made the conversion probability dependent on the city damage, but still players might get annoyed, if a city state converts right before their army could even enter the territory of a free city. On the other hand your suggested game rule might be abused by players by simply putting one unit in the free city territory without attacking the city. So I am afraid it is not easy to balance.
If you simply want to increase the conversion probability you can open FreeCityStates.lua in my mod files with an editor and the increase the value of

local iConversionProbability = 7

The annoyance mentioned is not a problem. The likeliness of the conversion goes up with the amount of time it is left in rebel state, and goes down if its loyalty is reducing and it is to be taken in by a major civ soon. Which means if a player sees a rebelling city at high loyalty, not in combat, and the player received notice of its rebellion pretty long ago, then he should not be attempting to bring troops in to capture it, unless he is willing to capture even the city state that it converts to afterward.

About the abuse where player just keep units within the border so that the city won't convert, I think it is fine as well. The rebelling city has units that will attack the player's units, so it is just a simple reward for those who is willing to send and maintain units in the city border so it won't convert to city state. Beside, there is only few reasons for a player to want to keep a city in rebel state (the only reason I can think of is that that city will convert to his via loyalty soon enough, and in such case, the city-state conversion doesn't kick in anyway), because a rebelling city brings benefit to no one, and if a player do not capture it, another will.

 

[Tiramisu]

So is there any good reason why I should increase the probability dependent on the number turns a free city is rebelling? I do not see much benefits from that.
Also I would have to put some UI informations for human players in the game, so they know since how many turns a free city is rebelling. Otherwise they would not know how much the current conversion probability is. That would make gamerules more complicated and it would require additional UI support.
So I really need good reasons to put so much work for your suggested change.

 

[Aparioss Frank]

The purpose of higher chance of city-state conversion the longer a city remain rebel is for consistency. If a city just started to rebel, there is next to no chance it will convert to city-state, so it makes sense to plan an attack soon. But if the rebelling city has been in such state for a long time, then it is not advisable to send troops, for the city has high chance to turn into city-state before the troops arrive. However, if the player is willing to attack a city-state and take the warmonger penalty regardless, then he can still go ahead and send troop.

As you mentioned, there are people who find the conversion annoying, because they might send troop to a rebelling city, only to see it had converted into a city-state. The chance increasing as time goes on aims to make the conversion seems less random, and can be expected as I mentioned above.

You can even make the city-state conversion chance starts low, and doesn't go up by a small amount every 1 turn it is in rebel state, but rather goes up by a considerable amount per 5 turns, or per 10 turns, etc... so that the chance increases is clear.

About the additional UI, I think a player should be able to estimate the conversion rate by keeping track of how long ago they received the game *City Rebel* notice. This should be especially easy if you leave a large margin for the conversion chance check (like make the chance increase steeply every 5-10 turns instead of increasing slowly every turn).

Another note on how to cope with abusing small combats to keep a city from converting. Of course, for the sake of consistency, and because a lot of people gonna complain if a city convert in the middle of combat, a city will not do so. Instead, you can let the conversion chance of the city still goes up in the background while it is in combat, so that if somehow the city gets out of combat (though rarely), it would have a high chance to convert soon. This aims to punishes players that abuse small combats without actually committing to take the city, by just keeping an unit fortified close to city center.

 

[Tiramisu]

So let us say they conversion chance would be 1% in the first rebelling turn, then 2% in the second turn, 3% in the next turn and so on...
Then the chance that the free city does not convert in the first turn is 99%, in the second turn (0.99*0.98) = 97%, in the third turn (0.99*0.98*0.97) = 94%, in the fourth turn (0.99*0.98*0.97*0.96) = 90%, and so on...
Currently my mod uses the same conversion chance 7% every turn, so after n turns the chance that the free city still has not converted yet would be simply 0.97^n, i.e. 93% in the first turn, 86% in the second turn, 80% in the third turn and so on...

I have calculated the chances and after a few turns the difference between these chances is not very big:

So I do not think it is worth changing the current conversion formula just to change the probabilities a little bit.
Currently most of the free cities convert after about 10-15 turns on standard speed. Using your suggestion would not make a significant change in most cases.

 

[Aparioss Frank]

So let us say they conversion chance would be 1% in the first rebelling turn, then 2% in the second turn, 3% in the next turn and so on...
Then the chance that the free city does not convert in the first turn is 99%, in the second turn (0.99*0.98) = 97%, in the third turn (0.99*0.98*0.97) = 94%, in the fourth turn (0.99*0.98*0.97*0.96) = 90%, and so on...
Currently my mod uses the same conversion chance 7% every turn, so after n turns the chance that the free city still has not converted yet would be simply 0.97^n, i.e. 93% in the first turn, 86% in the second turn, 80% in the third turn and so on...

I have calculated the chances and after a few turns the difference between these chances is not very big:
View attachment 499628

So I do not think it is worth changing the current conversion formula just to change the probabilities a little bit.
Currently most of the free cities convert after about 10-15 turns on standard speed. Using your suggestion would not make a significant change in most cases.

I did not mean for the chance to increase linearly with time at all. In fact I would suggest using a chance that changes exponentially with time. The likelihood of a rebelling city to survive for a long time is already very slim, so it should be more likely to convert to a city-state if it does survive a long time.

There is no need to use a complex function, rather, using a set number for the chance depending on the number of turn it has been in rebel state is better. For example:

0 - 5 turns: 5%
6 - 10 turns: 15%
11 - 15 turns: 30%
16 - 20 turns: 50%
20+ turns: 80%

That's the idea.

 

[Tiramisu]

That would not be a very good idea, because it would lead to the following probabilities:

Spoiler :

So after 10 the chance that the city still has remained rebelling would be only 34%. After 20 turns it would be nearly 0%. That does seem to be very good to me, because the conversion chance would increase too fast and I do not see much benefits from this.
I understand that you are trying to say that the chances should be somehow dependent on the history of the free city to make it a little bit more immersive, but this could lead to some unwanted consequences. So I think the current system is good enough for now.

 

[Aparioss Frank]

That would not be a very good idea, because it would lead to the following probabilities:

Spoiler :

View attachment 499650

So after 10 the chance that the city still has remained rebelling would be only 34%. After 20 turns it would be nearly 0%. That does seem to be very good to me, because the conversion chance would increase too fast and I do not see much benefits from this.
I understand that you are trying to say that the chances should be somehow dependent on the history of the free city to make it a little bit more immersive, but this could lead to some unwanted consequences. So I think the current system is good enough for now.

The exact number for the chance growth is up to you to decide, the number I suggested just served as an example (I actually copied the stats growth from a runes in LoL). The only thing I'm advising you is a steeply increasing chance of the city converting.

Game play wise, it is already very difficult for a free city to survive 10 turns: the same loyalty pressure that forced the city out of its old empire is still acting on it, and nearby players would already had troops around it, ready to attack, the moment they noticed its loyalty decreasing. So, if a rebelling city is somehow unchecked, and is left without agro, which is extremely rare, it "deserves" that chance to convert to a city-state ("deserves" here means to punish those who wanted that rebelling city but failed to keep it agro-ed at all). I can already imagine that even with this conversion system in place, the first 10 turns would determine if the conversion be effective at all.
And you already understood my point for the chance growth on a historical standing.

From my experience, the event of a city rebelling, and surviving for more than a dozen turns, is rare. If you have no mechanism to semi-guarantee that it will convert, then most of the time there will be no city converted at all. That'd be such a shame because the conversion is such an interesting idea.

 

[Tiramisu]

I see now that your main problem are the rare city state conversions in your games. Now in my games the rate of new city states being born is high enough, because I am using two mods called
More Opponents and Religions
Harder Loyalty and Emergencies
The first mod adds much more civilizations and city states in the game, which makes it more likely that free city revolts occur. The other mod helps free cities to survive much longer.
So if you are not using these mods then you will probably see much less city state conversions. Especially my harder loyalty mod is helping a lot, because it prevents that free cities get assimilated too frequently, which is a problem in the base game, since Firaxis did not balance this very well in my opinion.

Now if you do not want to use these mods you can still increase iConversionProbability in my lua script to make conversions more likely. You do not even have to increase this probability too much. 11% should be enough. Currently iConversionProbability is 7%, which means that after 10 turns in about 50% of the cases a free city converts.
If you set iConversionProbability = 11 instead, then about 70% of the cases a free city converts after 10 turns, which should be good enough.

You should also note that I cannot put too many city states in the game. So if the conversion probability would increase too much over time, then the game would run out of new city states too quickly. That is why I do not like to to semi-guarantee successful revolts.
Also you should note that capital cities and cities with wonders never get converted. So you should be careful setting up games that do not have many eligible cities for city state conversions.